PIECES OF A WOMAN - Claudia Tomassini
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
PIECES OF A WOMAN
Directed by Kornél Mundruczó
Starring Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Molly Parker, Sarah Snook, Iliza
Shlesinger, Benny Safdie, Jimmie Falls, Ellen Burstyn
**WORLD PREMIERE – In Competition – Venice Film Festival 2020**
**OFFICIAL SELECTION – Gala Presentations – Toronto International
Film Festival 2020**
Press Contacts:
US: Julie Chappell | julie@cineticmedia.com
International: Claudia Tomassini | claudia@claudiatomassini.com
Sales Contact:
Linda Jin | linda.jin@bronstudios.com
1
SHORT SYNOPSIS
When an unfathomable tragedy befalls a young mother (Vanessa Kirby), she begins a year-long
odyssey of mourning that touches her husband (Shia LaBeouf), her mother (Ellen Burstyn), and
her midwife (Molly Parker). Director Kornél Mundruczó (White God, winner of the Prix Un
Certain Regard Award, 2014) and partner/screenwriter Kata Wéber craft a deeply personal
meditation and ultimately transcendent story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss.
SYNOPSIS
Martha and Sean Carson (Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf) are a Boston couple on the verge of
parenthood whose lives change irrevocably during a home birth at the hands of a flustered
midwife (Molly Parker), who faces charges of criminal negligence. Thus begins a year-long
odyssey for Martha, who must navigate her grief while working through fractious relationships
with her husband and her domineering mother (Ellen Burstyn), along with the publicly vilified
midwife whom she must face in court. From director Kornél Mundruczó (White God, winner of
the Prix Un Certain Regard Award, 2014), with artistic support from executive producer Martin
Scorsese, and written by Kata Wéber, Mundruczó’s partner, comes a deeply personal, searing
domestic aria in exquisite shades of grey and an ultimately transcendent story of a woman
learning to live alongside her loss.
LONG SYNOPSIS
From director Kornél Mundruczó (White God, winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard Award,
2014) and partner/screenwriter Kata Wéber comes a deeply personal meditation and ultimately
transcendent story of a woman learning to live alongside loss.
Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and Sean (Shia LeBeouf) are a Boston couple eagerly anticipating the
arrival of their first child, a girl. Having planned for a home birth, Martha becomes concerned
when she goes into labor only to learn that her midwife is assisting with another delivery and is
unavailable. After a replacement, Eva, (Molly Parker) arrives instead, Martha chooses to place
her trust in the woman who has both a calm demeanor and years of experience in her field.
However, unexpected complications arise that put Martha’s baby in extreme distress. By the time
paramedics arrive at the home she and Sean share, it’s too late. The infant is gone.
That unfathomable tragedy sends Martha on a year-long odyssey of mourning that touches her
husband, her mother (Academy Award®-winner Ellen Burstyn), her sister and cousin (Iliza
Shlesinger and Sarah Snook)—and the midwife. As Martha struggles to move through the world
burdened by profound sorrow and a broken heart, she is greeted at every turn by societal
pressures and familial expectations that she behave according to certain proscribed rituals. Yet
2even though her interpersonal relationships begin to fray, Martha grieves in her own way, living
her experience on her own terms and remaining true to herself.
An empathetic, elliptical tale beautifully told, PIECES OF A WOMAN examines the ways in
which our darkest moments shape who we become and how radical acts of forgiveness can
provide a true path toward peace.
Directed by Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó from a script by partner/screenwriter Kata
Wéber and executive produced by Martin Scorsese, PIECES OF A WOMAN stars Vanessa
Kirby, Shia LeBeouf, Molly Parker, Sarah Snook, Iliza Shlesinger, Benny Safdie, Jimmie Fails
and Ellen Burstyn. A BRON Studios production.
FILMMAKER STATEMENT
Is it possible to survive if you have lost the one you loved the most? Where do you turn when
you have nowhere to seemingly turn to? My wife and I wanted to share one of our most personal
experiences with audiences through a story of an unborn child, with the faith that art can be the
best medicine for pain. Are we going to be the same after a tragedy as we always were? Could
we have partners in the free fall of grief? One’s world can feel upside down and so difficult to
orient to. With PIECES OF A WOMAN, we wanted to form an authentic story about tragedy and
learning to live alongside that grief. Loss steps beyond the boundaries of understanding or
control for all of us, but it comes with the ability to be reborn.
ABOUT THE FILM
The incredibly personal and profound story of one woman’s experiences in the aftermath of the
heartbreaking death of her newborn daughter, PIECES OF A WOMAN began its journey to the
screen nearly three years ago, when acclaimed Hungarian playwright and screenwriter Kata
Wéber began to write emotional character sketches depicting conversations between a mother
and her adult daughter that were shaped by grief. Those early scenes eventually grew to become
a play, also titled PIECES OF A WOMAN, first produced for the Polish stage and directed by
Wéber’s partner Kornél Mundruczó. The story was broken into two acts—a home birth that goes
tragically awry, and a family dinner that explodes into confrontation and recriminations.
Although both Wéber and Mundruczó felt that the play stood on its own as a powerful piece of
work, they also believed that the subject matter and the themes that it touched upon merited
further exploration. “It felt like a bigger story—it could go further, it could go deeper,” Wéber
says. “I wanted to spend some more time with this material, and I somehow wanted to feel not
just the main characters, but the people around them, the whole family and society.”
3Wéber, herself a mother (she and Mundruczó have one child together), began to read testimonies
from women who had suffered miscarriages or whose infants had died, and she became drawn to
the ways in which they dealt with loss. “I found all of those stories so captivating and so
powerful,” she says. “Every one of them had a different way to grieve, and every one of them
explained how isolated they felt. Everyone around you, they want you to move on. They want
you to be the same person, but how could you ever be the same person? This question of
perspective, this is what I wanted to talk about.”
Her own experiences also fed into the expanded narrative, though Wéber prefers not to elaborate
on the specific circumstances of her personal loss, feeling that “real art is never supposed to be
taken word-by-word because it can never be illustrative, only suggestive,” she says.
“With this story, I wanted to speak about the absence of an unborn child,” Wéber continues.
“The isolation that they create around us, that the person we have the most real connection with
is not present in this world, while their existence is indisputable. This is what my story is really
about and in reality it is part of my story and through me also many women’s. I wanted to depict
the emotional reality of this, to capture this without telling my experience as is. On the other
hand, I do know what it feels like to admit you won’t get over losing someone, while you will
also never be the same as you were before the tragedy.”
In creating Martha, she invested the character with some of her own traits: both women are the
daughters of Holocaust survivors whose perspectives on coping with tragedy are unique and
immutable. “Usually an artist talks about himself or herself in everything she or he makes, I
think,” Wéber says. “I never had a tragic home birth, but I wanted to talk about my unborn child
through this story and all the feelings around this baby. I also wanted to talk about being from a
family that survived the Holocaust and having all those memories within the family, all those
patterns. I wanted to explore how we process tragedies—how do we manage to survive?”
Having worked abroad as a playwright, Wéber decided to write her PIECES OF A WOMAN
screenplay in English. Martha’s story, she felt, was at once singular and universal and would
easily lend itself to cross-cultural translation. “Not all material has the capacity to work in a
different culture,” she says. “But when I wrote the script, I showed it to some friends first in
Germany and then in England, then in America—the reactions I got gave me the courage to
continue.”
Mundruczó, who had read and responded to Wéber’s earliest drafts, also encouraged her to refine
the screenplay, sensing the potential for another cinematic collaboration; the filmmakers had
previously worked together on such celebrated projects as the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain
Regard Award-winner White God, one of five films Mundruczó’s had screen at Cannes.
4Mundruczó had been casting about for some time for a project that could serve as his English-
language debut, leading to several false-starts in Hollywood. PIECES OF A WOMAN offered
the director the sort of script he had been looking for—one that would allow him to bring his
signature artistic sensibility to a challenging, emotional drama. “I don’t feel any disharmony
between myself and this movie,” he says.
Similarly, when producer Ashley Levinson, who also serves as Chief Strategy Officer at BRON
Studios, first encountered Wéber’s screenplay, she felt deeply moved, and she sensed in it the
potential to bring to light the sort of important story that is rarely told on screen. “As a mother of
a young child, I remained amazed by all the small things that must go right to have a healthy
child—I remember being pregnant and doing everything possible to increase that likelihood,”
Levinson says. “And when I read Martha’s story, I empathized with her and the many women I
know that have experienced this kind of tragedy. It kept swirling in my head—it felt like a
conversation that we should be having more with women and people that suffered loss to begin
to heal.”
Levinson championed the project inside BRON and found her colleagues shared her enthusiasm
about the creative opportunities afforded by the material. Soon, financing was in place, Kevin
Turen (Arbitrage, Euphoria) had signed on to produce the project along with Levinson, and
PIECES OF A WOMAN was on its way to the screen. “From the first moment I read Kata’s
screenplay, I felt that it was a beautiful story comprised of complex and nuanced characters that
deeply resonated with me,” offers Turen. “It struck a real emotional chord, and I knew instantly
that this was a story that I wanted to be involved with telling.”
“I think it’s important to shed light on salient conversations that are often times very difficult to
have, especially surrounding the aspect of loss,” Turen continues. “We all process and handle
grief and trauma differently. There is also the notion of guilt and blame that can be assigned to
oneself or to another party. These are all deeply human emotions and part of the larger idea of
just trying to contextualize a painful moment, and whether that may possibly bring some
semblance of closure—whether it is specifically the unbearable loss of a child or it’s some other
kind of emotionally painful circumstance, these feelings and sentiments are so universal.”
In depicting Martha’s experiences as she delivers her baby and then must find a way forward
through her grief after the child’s death, PIECES OF A WOMAN required a gifted actress in its
demanding lead role. When the script made its way to English actress Vanessa Kirby, best
known to American audiences for her award-winning portrayal of Princess Margaret on the
acclaimed drama The Crown, she immediately felt a connection to the character of Martha. She
had been looking for a project that would challenge her for some time—with Wéber’s sensitive
screenplay, she found exactly what she’d been seeking. “I read it in, like, an hour, and I realized
5I just absolutely had to do it,” Kirby says. “I had been looking for a part that scared me. This
completely terrified me, and that’s always a good sign.”
From the start, screenwriter Wéber felt that Kirby had an instinctual grasp on the role. “She was
very open,” she says. “Reading the material, she was absolutely enthusiastic about it. For me,
Martha is a real hero who dares to defy the expectations of those around her, and I think Vanessa
represents this kind of person in real life, too. She reminds me a little bit of the movie stars of the
Golden Age of Hollywood somehow. She’s so emotional with a deep inner life.”
Wéber shared with Kirby some of the research that had helped shape the screenplay, and Kirby
also spent time with women who had lived through the same sort of tragic loss that Martha
suffers in the film. “The more I spoke with them, the more I felt a duty to put something on
screen that represented these women’s experiences,” Kirby says. “Really, the film is an ode to
grief in a way and what a very individual and lonely experience grieving can be.”
Adds producer Levinson: “While developing the film, we researched the statistics surrounding
still births, miscarriages and sudden infant death. It was astounding to read about how prevalent
this is within families across the country and the world. Yet I don’t think we’ve addressed or
supported how truly complicated this experience must be for families—how much responsibility
the parents take, how disruptive it must feel for the individuals involved and what we can do to
support healing.”
Critically acclaimed actor Shia LeBeouf joined the production as Martha’s partner Sean, a
construction worker who is devoted to her and delighted at the prospect of welcoming their child
into the world. Although their relationship begins in a place of mutual respect and love, the
tragedy forever changes the trajectory of their romance.
“Sean’s character is one of the dearest to me,” Wéber says. “As an engineer who builds bridges,
he is always on the lookout for meeting points. There is something metaphorical about this to
me: someone whose passion is to build bridges, now has to destroy them. I wanted to portray a
sensitive man who is locked out of his wife’s love during the grieving period for some
incomprehensible reason. This shakes him up on many different levels because he is a troubled
man who conquered a serious addiction when he met Martha. Sean—in a completely natural
way—wears his grief on his sleeve. He would like to share it with others. In contrast to Martha,
he mourns in a very classic way, meaning that after the anger and the denial he is able to come to
some kind of acceptance.”
LeBeouf has established a well-earned reputation for unwavering commitment to the roles he
accepts—when he agreed to play a supporting role in PIECES OF A WOMAN, Mundruczó
knew the character of Sean would become a multi-faceted, compelling figure on screen. “It’s a
very important role that needs a huge actor to make it alive and not just a secondary figure on the
6side of Martha,” the filmmaker says. “What Shia can give to a role—his attention, his passion,
his gut, his ideas—it is tremendous. The couple as well, Shia and Vanessa, is, in my opinion, a
very sexy couple. I believed their love absolutely.”
Although Sean desperately wants to mourn their loss together, Martha is unable to offer him the
solace he seeks. As she retreats further and further into herself, he looks elsewhere for affection
and validation, sliding back into the grips of substance abuse after years of sobriety. The fleeting,
tenuous nature of their relationship becomes evident—grief destroys their romance. “Sean can’t
accept the absurdity of losing someone,” says Mundruczó. “His realization comes when he lets
go of this search, which also requires him to adopt a self-destructive mentality. Shia represented
this with such deeply spiritual complexity that is very rarely seen on screen.”
The other forceful presence in Martha’s life is her mother, Elizabeth, a wealthy widow and a
Holocaust survivor who agrees with virtually none of the choices her daughter has made in her
life so far; she strongly disapproves of Sean and of Martha’s decision to have their child at home,
though she initially keeps her feelings to herself. In the wake of the tragedy, she becomes
increasingly forceful, believing that Martha would recover from the loss of her daughter more
quickly if she would only process the event in the way her mother believes is best.
“I love this mother,” Wéber says. “She’s a little bit monstrous. She’s very smart. You could say
she’s a cold character, but at the same time, she has a knowledge of survival that she wants to
pass on. She has good intentions, but for Martha, her actions are so cruel.” Adds Levinson: “The
film touches on a cyclical trauma. Elizabeth experienced a horrendous start to her life in war and
is determined to make sure that her children are strong enough to endure any challenges.”
The role went to Emmy, Tony and Academy Award®-winning actress Ellen Burstyn. “She’s a
strong woman, and she has her conditioning and her opinions about things,” Burstyn says of the
character. “She’s someone who has a clear vision of what’s right and what works and what’s
good and wants that for her daughter and doesn’t understand her daughter’s choices.”
“To work with Ellen Burstyn is a huge gift,” says Mundruczó. “She symbolizes everything for
me that is the best in American cinema. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is a classic movie for
us. When we heard that she was interested in the movie, I couldn’t believe it.”
Burstyn offered up her New York home for the filmmakers and Kirby and LeBeouf to gather for
several days to review the screenplay and to spend time exploring the scenes together in the late
fall of 2019, about five weeks before shooting got underway. “My apartment was the kind of
rehearsal space,” Burstyn says. “We talked about the characters a lot and argued about them and
went through the birth-giving of the material that you do. It had its labor pains, but they’re very
7creative artists, all of these people. So, there was a lot of wrangling, but all smart and sincere and
artistically intended. It wasn’t ego. It was work. And it paid off in the end, I think.”
“It was amazing,” Kirby says of those preliminary rehearsals with Burstyn. “Shia and I are both
huge fans of her and were completely in awe. She’s got a room with all her awards in it that Shia
and I just couldn’t stop staring at. It was so intimidating. But she was so warm and lovely, and
we all sat there and had tea and discussed it.”
Separately, Kirby and LeBeouf visited Boston together, finding where Martha and Sean might
live and even purchasing items for the nursery their characters set up for the baby. “We did
everything we could to make it as real as possible to help you believe what these people had
because you don’t get much time with them before everything is lost,” Kirby says, adding, “It’s
not really a story about the death of a baby. It’s the story of these two people that it happens to.”
With such respected actors in the key roles, a stellar supporting cast came together quickly:
Molly Parker, an Emmy Award®-winner for her work on the political drama House of Cards,
was cast as Eve, the midwife who delivers Martha’s baby, and Succession star Sarah Snook as
Martha’s cousin, an attorney who pursues legal action against her for negligence at the behest of
Martha’s mother. Iliza Shlesinger and actor and filmmaker Benny Safdie were cast as Martha’s
sister and brother-in-law, with The Last Black Man in San Francisco writer and star Jimmie Fails
in a small but key role as Max.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
PIECES OF A WOMAN was shot in Montreal, Québec, in December of 2019 and January of
2020. Remarkably, the shoot began with what is arguably the film’s most harrowing sequence:
the home birth.
Filmmaker Mundruczó and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, an Independent Spirit Award
nominee for his work on the 2018 Nicolas Cage cult thriller Mandy, opted to shoot the extended,
nearly 30-minute sequence all in one take. The wildly ambitious approach was designed to help
the viewer more keenly feel the range of emotions Martha experiences during the delivery—her
elation at the impending arrival of her child, her concern when the midwife she’s expecting can’t
be present, the pain of the delivery itself and her abject fear as she grows increasingly terrified
for the well-being of her baby. “You have to be with her in that moment,” Mundruczó says. “Her
problem is our problem. I did not want any distance between her and the audience.”
Adds Loeb: “We wanted to make time relevant. We liked the idea of connecting the audience to
something that’s happening right in front of them, not wanting to hide things and letting it be
8exactly what it is. Also, we wanted to give the actors the freedom to use the space in whichever
way they wanted.”
Both the director and the cinematographer rejected the idea of handheld camerawork for the
sequence, feeling that the approach had been utilized far too many times on screen. Instead, Loeb
chose to film the sequence using a Gimbal, which he operated himself—the equipment, though
heavy, allowed him to follow the actors from room to room in the ground-floor Montreal
apartment that doubled as Martha and Sean’s modest residence. “We found a way to do it that
became less mechanical and more human,” Loeb says. “The camera, being spiritual, it was
always a little bit below the actors—a perspective that could hypothetically resemble someone’s
spirit that would move in a different way.”
Adds Kirby: “Benjamin’s camera was really following us on the journey, almost as if it was the
spirit of the baby watching us. That was a really beautiful creative decision.”
For two days prior to shooting, Kirby, LeBeouf and Parker worked with Loeb and Mundruczó to
physically block how the action would play out, but they collectively chose to forgo traditional
rehearsals to better preserve the spirit of spontaneity for the camera. Kirby and Parker also spent
time working with midwife consultant Elan McAllistar, who traveled to Montreal to serve as a
consultant on the production.
When cameras finally rolled on the first day, the actors performed the delivery sequence in full
three separate times. “It was one of the most challenging days of my life, but it was also one of
the best ones I’ve ever had on set,” Kirby says. “You know that if one movement goes off, then
you ruin the whole take, but we felt a lot of trust. We didn’t quite know what we were going to
say necessarily. We didn’t quite know moment to moment what was going to happen. It was like
doing a freeform play really, just going, ‘Ok, Action’ and let the birth happen. It was the most
incredible experience.”
Mundruczó encouraged Kirby to give her all to the performance, assuring her that he would tell
her if and when she needed to pull back. “I told her just to feel brave and to push the
performance to the edge and believe in it,” he says. “What she’s creating there from her body
out, it was amazing. I told her many times while we were shooting those scenes, ‘Vanessa,
you’re not alone. There’s someone inside you. You are with someone.’ And you completely
believe that she’s not alone. You see the unseen. And that’s huge.”
On the second day of the production, the actors and the filmmakers shot two additional takes
before moving on. “We wrapped early, and Shia and I sat and drank tea and calmed down a bit,”
Kirby says. “We knew something special had happened. From the inside, it was like the greatest
pleasure of both our careers.”
9The Martha who emerges from that experience is not the woman she was before—and she’s
surrounded by well-meaning relatives and friends who cannot begin to comprehend the often-
contradictory emotions she’s feeling at any given moment. Her psyche has been shattered into
fragments, and even when they are someday pieced together again, they will form a different
person. To suggest her sense of extreme dislocation, the filmmakers chose to compose the
remainder of the film from moments of Martha’s life.
On Oct. 9, just three weeks after the delivery, she’s confronted in a market by one of her
mother’s friends who assures her that she understands what Martha has been through and insists
that the incident is the fault of the midwife. We learn, too, that the results of a criminal autopsy
are inconclusive. Four weeks later, Nov. 7, Martha has decided to donate her baby’s body to
science over the objections of her mother. We also see that Sean and Martha have grown distant.
She does not have the capacity to recognize his pain; he can’t fathom the way she’s managed to
internalize her own grief.
“I wanted to depict Sean as someone who tries to help and who has the best intentions and who
is grieving the way in which you would expect,” Wéber says. “Then Martha has this very, very
different view on losing the child, and therefore the gap between them is getting bigger and
bigger. Of course, I could have made the choice that this tragedy brings them together again. I
didn’t.”
These poignant passages feel like a visual diary, snapshots of Martha’s life that also help
chronicle the dissolution of her relationship with Sean. Given the actors’ lived-in, naturalistic
performances, Loeb says he and Mundruczó often sought to capture them in a way that felt like
non-fiction filmmaking—though in terms of artistic references, they often looked to painters
such as the Polish-French artist Balthus or British painter Lucian Freud. “We were put in a
position of almost making it as a documentary where the acting and the story was always at the
forefront,” Loeb says.
Offers Mundruczó: “After this huge intro, it became a question of how can I use fragmented
storytelling to create as much suspense as possible, as much secrecy and as much silence—I
wanted you to feel her connection to the lost one. It’s very difficult to create connections to
something that is not visible in a movie. That was something we had to work on a lot, to give
enough silent space for Martha to establish that connection, to help the audience feel that.”
Kirby was often called upon to portray Martha’s state of mind wordlessly, with aspects of the
role verging on silent performance. She’s a witness to the actions of those around her but cannot
engage with them—her wounds are simply to raw to expose. “I really had to get in the mindset
of somebody who felt so fundamentally that they had failed at the one thing they were supposed
10not to and literally cannot allow herself to feel that,” Kirby says. “I wanted to scream and let my
feelings out, and instead I had to allow myself to not go there at all because she didn’t. It’s
incredibly difficult to live that. You feel trapped and so incredibly alone.”
Adds Wéber: “Everyone around her is waiting for her to break down. This is your instinct—she
should break down. I wanted to keep her together as long as possible, so in this sense, it works
like a ticking clock. You feel something is coming. Also, because she is so silent in the movie, it
adds to this element of wondering when is she going to break down.”
As Martha continues her largely interior journey toward acceptance, life moves on around her—
by January, midwife Eve has been charged with negligence, misconduct and manslaughter.
Martha’s mother, who views the trial as a means for the family to obtain closure, summons her
daughters, their partners and her niece to a dinner at her home. From the start, tensions are high,
and finally, emotion spills over as the matriarch demands Martha dig deep to find her inner
strength and rise above the tragedy, insisting that she go to court to demand justice on behalf of
her lost child.
Like the home birth sequence that opens the film, the nine-minute family dinner scene was shot
all in one-take. “That was heavy,” Mundruczó says. “It was a big lesson for me in terms of how
can you give the actors enough freedom yet keep everything on board cinematically. There’s
such a fragile balance there. If you start to limit them, then it absolutely harms the performances,
and without performances, there’s no movie. But at the same time, if you have just
performances, and you have no cinematic approach and no higher meaning for something, then
it’s senseless. Then it’s psychodrama. To shoot a scene like the family dinner scene, it was a hard
balance. It needs a lot of attention and a lot of trust from both sides.”
Burstyn says she felt pressure to deliver Elizabeth’s monologue with perfect conviction. “It was
a very tense, very difficult day—there’s no room for error with something like that” she recalls.
“Then just before they shot my close-up, Vanessa said to me, ‘Make me go to court.’ It was a
wonderful piece of direction because I did the scene and I came to the end, and I knew I hadn’t
made her go to court so I kept on going. I don’t even know what I said. Whatever it is, it’s in the
film. But I knew by the time I finished, I had made her go to court.”
“It was great because we both come from the theater, so we had so much to share,” Kirby says of
Burstyn. “She’s such an inspiration of mine. And we would play with things. We would explore
how we thought these two characters would speak to each other—what they have in common. I
think they’re very, very similar. And when you have an extremely similar mother and daughter,
those relationships are interesting to explore. I found that if they have similar energies, they’re
more likely to be antagonistic and combative. And we loved doing that.”
11In the end, Martha does go to court, but her presence doesn’t necessarily influence the
proceedings in the way that her mother might have anticipated. Rather than helping to secure a
conviction, she delivers an impassioned speech about compassion and forgiveness. At last, she
shares a glimpse into the pain she’s been feeling over the preceding months and the perspective
it’s afforded her. She has no interest in hollow revenge; she wants to find only peace and a path
toward healing. That’s the lesson she’s determined she should take away from her child’s brief
time in this world. The girl is gone, but not forgotten. She’ll be with Martha always. But no
verdict or settlement could ever begin to make up for what she’s lost.
The courtroom speech, Wéber says, was the most difficult passage of dialogue to write for the
film—though from the outset of writing PIECES OF A WOMAN, she knew that she wanted
Martha to reject the idea of somehow being compensated for her tragedy. “It’s so important in
every conflict not to look for compensation,” she says. “Compensation always evokes another
conflict. Martha doesn’t want that. That is the seed of peace. Only true heroes can really mean
that. People who within their tragedy are able to see from a distance, from another perspective,
and say, I do not want revenge, I do not want compensation because I want to move on—this
idea interested me from the beginning.”
Mundruczó and Loeb drew inspiration for how to shoot Martha’s courtroom speech from Robert
Bresson’s landmark 1962 French film, The Trial of Joan of Arc, which is both spare and
restrained. “We did not want it to feel too stagey, to be too Hollywood,” Mundruczó says. “Our
idea was just like in music, to be very monotonic. She talks in a very simple language but very
human language. Vanessa’s performance there is unbelievable. Everything is on the screen.”
Having the shoot conclude with that sequence, Kirby says, felt like a relief. “Her arc in the movie
is really that she keeps it all in until she realizes that in the courtroom for the first time, she’s
ready to speak about her experience,” Kirby says. “She says, ‘I understand that there are some
things that you can’t replace, and that is part of my life and part of me. And if I can acknowledge
and witness it, then that’s ok. It’s better to acknowledge and be with the truth of that than repress
it and not want to face it.’”
Playing Martha, sharing her story with the world, having the chance to express one woman’s
experience, Kirby says, completely changed her as an actor. “It was the most meaningful
experience of my life career-wise so far,” she says. “Both Kata and I wanted to tell this story that
hadn’t been told on screen before. The women I found in my research who had been through
this, I owe them so much for what I was able to do in the film. I wanted to do right by them.”
Filmmaker Mundruczó hopes that audiences empathize with Martha, that they will share in her
tragedy and find strength in her courage and her willingness to forgive. “I felt it would be great
12to create something emotional and sharp at the same time,” he says. “What is important for me is
the idea that you can find your own way through grief. We have to face these questions.”
Adds producer Turen: “Ultimately, I hope that by viewing this film, it sparks open dialogue
between people and possibly even helps someone process emotional wounds that may have
never fully healed. Often when someone is going through something traumatic, there is an
element of feeling alone in the world. Hopefully, this sheds light on the fact that you aren’t
alone, and there is no one way to grieve.”
During the process of making the film, Wéber and Mundruczó say that they each gained new
insights into how the loss they experienced together changed them. “There are times when you
truly lose the ground under your feet, and you can’t comprehend what happened,” says
Mundruczó. “You try to search for answers. Most times, it doesn’t make any sense, and it drives
you mad. This is when art provides the perfect platform to express the inexpressible. Art is
rational, but also spiritual. Without the process we’ve gone through during making this film, we
wouldn’t be who we are now.”
Offers Wéber: “I’m becoming more and more convinced that real artistic qualities are born from
fear and frustration. To me this is a step, a weapon, a statement that helps me fight my demons.
In this sense, I’m grateful to destiny that allowed this film to be made.”
What Wéber and Mundruczó have together achieved with PIECES OF A WOMAN is so
remarkable that cinematic legend Martin Scorsese even agreed to sign on as an executive
producer to lend his support to this critically important story. Mundruczó and Scorsese were
connected through the film’s Academy Award®-winning composer Howard Shore, whom the
Hungarian filmmaker had long admired. Scorsese viewed an early cut of the film and agreed to
executive produce.
“Personally, this is a very important connection to me,” Mundruczó says. “It reassured me that
personality and auteur cinema have a place in today’s industry. Faith is also a crucial metaphor
in the film and that bridges can be built between eras and connect in the present.”
Says Scorsese: “PIECES OF A WOMAN for me was a deep and uniquely moving experience. I
was emotionally invested in it from the first scene, and the experience only intensified as I
watched, spellbound by the filmmaking and the work of a splendid cast that includes my old
colleague Ellen Burstyn. You feel as if you’ve been dropped into the vortex of a family crisis and
moral conflict with all its nuances, drawn out with care and compassion but without judgement.
Kornél Mundruczó has a fluid, immersive style with the camera that makes it hard to look away,
and impossible not to care.
13“It’s lucky to see a movie that takes you by surprise,” Scorsese continues. “It’s a privilege to
help it find the wide audience it deserves.”
ABOUT THE CAST
VANESSA KIRBY (Martha) is a BAFTA-award winning actress who started her career in a
series of hugely successful theater roles for director David Thacker. She first appeared as Ann in
Arthur Miller’s All My Sons for which she received the BIZA Rising Star Award at the
Manchester, followed by Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts. Kirby went on to secure roles in the National
Theatre’s Women Beware Women and the West Yorkshire Playhouse’s As You Like It. In 2011,
her role in The Acid Test at the Royal Court Theatre received rave reviews.
Kirby made her TV debut in the BBC series The Hour alongside Ben Whishaw and Dominic
West. She went on to play Estella in the BBC’s adaption of Great Expectations alongside Ray
Winstone, Gillian Anderson and Douglas Booth. She played the lead role of Alice in Ridley
Scott’s mini-series adaptation of Kate Mosse’s novel Labyrinth in 2012, and then went on to star
in Charlie Countryman alongside Shia LeBeouf, Evan Rachel Wood and Mads Mikkelson. Later
that year, Kirby appeared in Three Sisters at the Young Vic, earning rave reviews.
In 2013, Kirby appeared in Richard Curtis’ About Time alongside Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel
McAdams and Bill Nighy. In 2014, she also starred in Queen and Country, the hilarious follow-
up to John Boorman’s Hope and Glory starring Callum Turner and David Thewlis. In 2014,
Kirby won the Best Supporting Actress award at the WhatsOnStage awards for her performance
alongside Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire at The Young
Vic.
In 2015, Kirby starred in the Wachowski siblings’ Jupiter Ascending alongside Mila Kunis,
Channing Tatum and Eddie Redmayne, and Bone in Throat, which premiered at SXSW in March
and also stars Ed Westwick, Tom Wilkinson and Neil Maskell. She starred in BBC2’s highly
anticipated one-off drama The Dresser alongside Anthony Hopkins and Sir Ian McKellen. The
two-hour drama was based on the play of the same name by Ronald Harwood and directed by
Richard Eyre. She also appeared opposite Sean Bean in ITV’s The Frankenstein Chronicles,
which tells the story of a fearless detective on the hunt for a crazed killer through the dark
recesses of Regency London.
In 2016, Kirby played Yelena in Uncle Vanya at The Almeida Theatre alongside Jessica Brown
Findlay, Tobias Menzies, Paul Rhys, Richard Lumsden, Hilton McRae and Ann Queensberry.
She then reprised her role as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. Kirby also starred
14in science-fiction film Kill Command and in Thea Sharrock’s Me Before You alongside Emilia
Clarke, Sam Claflin and Charles Dance.
In 2016 and 2017, Kirby starred as Princess Margaret in Netflix’s award-winning series The
Crown. The first series explores the story of the British Royal family from 1947 to 1955 and
Princess Margaret’s ill-fated engagement to Peter Townsend. The second series, set in the 1960s,
examines Princess Margaret’s relationship and marriage to photographer Antony Armstrong-
Jones (Lord Snowdon). Kirby’s performance as Princess Margaret earned her a Supporting
Actress nomination at the British Academy Television Awards 2017, and again in 2018, where
she won. Kirby was also nominated in the Supporting Actress Category at the Primetime Emmy
Awards® in 2018.
She returned to the big screen in Mission: Impossible—Fallout alongside Tom Cruise, Henry
Cavill and Rebecca Ferguson; the sixth installment of the film franchise was a box-office hit,
pulling in more than $735 million globally. From June to September 2018, Kirby played the
titular role in Carrie Cracknell’s Julie at London’s National Theatre.
In August 2019, Kirby starred in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, a spin-off from the
Fast & Furious franchise; she played Hattie Shaw, an MI6 agent and the sister to Jason
Statham’s mercenary character, Deckard Shaw. The cast also included Dwayne Johnson, Idris
Elba and Helen Mirren. 2019 also saw Kirby complete filming on the independent film The
World to Come, which tells the story of two women who forge a close connection despite their
isolation in the mid-19th century American frontier. Directed by Mona Fastvold, the film also
stars Casey Affleck and Katherine Waterston, and it will compete at this year’s Venice Film
Festival in the main competition.
Kirby also completed filming PIECES OF A WOMAN, which will also premiere at the Venice
Film Festival 2020 in the main competition. She is currently working on the next installment of
the Mission: Impossible franchise, which is slated for release in 2021.
Kirby is a global ambassador for War Child, a charity that supports children from across the
world who are affected by war and conflict.
SHIA LABEOUF (Sean) recently received rave reviews for his performance in Honey Boy,
which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The film also marks Shia’s first feature
length film as a screenwriter and reunited him with director, Alma Har’el (the two previously
collaborated on the documentary, LoveTrue, which she directed, and he produced). LaBeouf
portrays a law-breaking, alcohol-abusing father who tries to mend his tumultuous relationship
with his son (Lucas Hedges & Noah Jupe) over the course of a decade. The film received a
Special Jury Award for Vision and Craft at the festival.
15LaBeouf can currently be seen in the crime drama, The Tax Collector, which was written and
directed by David Ayer. In 2019, Shia starred in The Peanut Butter Falcon alongside Dakota
Johnson, Bruce Dern and Zachary Gottsagen. The film, which follows a young man with Down
syndrome who runs away to pursue his dream of becoming a professional wrestler, premiered at
last year’s SXSW Film Festival. LaBeouf will next be seen in PIECES OF A WOMAN
alongside Vanessa Kirby, directed by Kornél Mundruczó. The film will premiere at this year’s
Venice Film Festival. He is also set to co-star in Don’t Worry Darling alongside Florence Pugh,
Chris Pine and Oliva Wilde, who will also direct and produce the project.
In 2017, LaBeouf starred in the drama Borg vs. McEnroe, which shows the rivalry, friendship
and personas of Björn Borg and John McEnroe and how they became international superstars,
both within the athletic world and mainstream culture. It premiered to rave reviews at the
Toronto Film Festival and critics heralded LaBeouf’s performance as “perfection,” “flawless”
and “explosive.” Prior to that, he was seen in the critically acclaimed independent film American
Honey, a coming-of-age drama about a gang of law-breaking teenagers chasing the American
dream. His performance earned him a British Independent Film Award nomination for “Best
Actor,” a London Critics’ Circle Film Award nomination for Supporting Actor of the Year and
an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Male.
Prior to that, LaBeouf co-starred in the post-apocalyptic thriller Man Down alongside Gary
Oldman, Jai Courtney and Kate Mara; the war drama Fury, directed by David Ayer with Brad
Pitt and Logan Lerman; Lars von Trier’s drama, Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1, a film about a self-
diagnosed nymphomaniac who recounts her erotic experiences; Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac:
Vol. 2; and the suspense drama Charlie Countryman, opposite Evan Rachel Wood, Mads
Mikkelsen and Melissa Leo.
LaBeouf starred in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which marked his third and final turn as the
enterprising and heroic Sam Witwicky. From the original Transformers released in 2007 (which
earned more than $700 million around the world in theatrical release and became the highest
grossing DVD of the year) to the second installment in 2009, Transformers: Revenge of the
Fallen, (which garnered global receipts upwards of $836 million,) Sam continued to find himself
in the middle of a life-and-death struggle between warring robot legions on Earth.
Additional film credits include Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep, Lawless alongside
Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman and Guy Pearce, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
opposite Michael Douglas, the fourth installment of Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones” series,
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, alongside Harrison Ford, D.J. Caruso’s
Eagle Eye, the Anthony Minghella-scripted segment of New York, I Love You, a romantic
anthology, the popular thriller Disturbia, the Academy Award®-nominated animated film Surf’s
16Up, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which won Best Ensemble Cast at the Sundance Film
Festival, Emilio Estevez’s acclaimed drama Bobby, The Greatest Game Ever Played, I, Robot,
Constantine, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and HBO’s “Project Greenlight” featuring The
Battle of Shaker Heights produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. In 2003, he made his
feature film debut in the comedy Holes, based on the best-selling book by Louis Sacher.
In 2007, LaBeouf was named the Star of Tomorrow by the ShoWest convention of the National
Association of Theater Owners, and in February 2008, he was awarded the BAFTA Orange
Rising Star Award, which was voted for by the British public. In addition, he was nominated for
four Teen Choice Awards for Transformers, winning the Breakout Male Award, the Teen Choice
Award for Movie Actor in a Horror/Thriller for his performance in Disturbia as well as a Scream
Award. In 2004, he was nominated for the Young Artists Award for Leading Young Actor in a
Feature Film and the Breakthrough Male Performance at the MTV Movie Awards for his
performance in Holes.
On television, LaBeouf garnered much praise from critics everywhere for his portrayal of Louis
Stevens on the Disney Channel’s original series Even Stevens. In 2003, he earned a Daytime
Emmy award for Outstanding Performer in a Children’s Series for his work on the highly-rated
family show.
In addition to his work in front of the camera, LaBeouf also has directed several projects
including music videos for Kid Cudi and Marilyn Manson.
MOLLY PARKER (Eva) received an Emmy Award® nomination for her role as House Whip
Jackie Sharp in House of Cards. She stars as Maureen Robinson in the hit Netflix series Lost in
Space, which is set to shoot its third and final season later this year. Recent films include
Deadwood: The Movie for HBO where she reprised her role as Alma Garret, Josephine Decker’s
Madeline’s Madeline, Erroll Morris’ Wormwood opposite Peter Sarsgaard, Stephen King’s 1922,
Ewan McGregor’s American Pastoral and the upcoming films Words on Bathroom Walls
opposite Charlie Plummer and Andy Garcia, Jockey opposite Clifton Collins Jr. and PIECES OF
A WOMAN opposite Shia LaBeouf and Vanessa Kirby. She also wrote and directed the short
film Bird, which premiered at multiple film festivals including Toronto and Telluride.
SARAH SNOOK (Suzanne) continues to establish herself as one of Hollywood’s most dynamic
actresses. She is set to return as the scene-stealing Siobhan ‘Shiv’ Roy in Season 3 of HBO’s
award-winning series Succession, for which she recently received her first Emmy Award®
nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Most recently, she appeared
in Brandon Trost’s comedy An American Pickle with Seth Rogen. HBO Max premiered the film
on Aug. 6, 2020, which marked the first original film released by the new streaming service.
17On television, she can next be seen in AMC’s anthology drama series Soulmates from Emmy®-
winning writer Will Bridges and Brett Goldstein. The six-part series takes place 15 years in the
future, and each episode will explore a new story, with Snook as the lead role of Nikki in the first
episode. The series is slated to premiere Oct. 5, 2020 on AMC.
Previously, Snook starred as the lead in the 2015 Australian drama series The Beautiful Lie,
which earned her a Logie Award nomination for Most Outstanding Actress as well as the
Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts nomination for Best Lead Actress in a
Television Drama. This marked Snook’s second AACTA nomination in this category, which she
previously won for her performance in the 2012 television movie Sisters of War. Her additional
television credits include an episode of Black Mirror, The Secret River, The Moodys, Redfern
Now, Spirited, Blood Brothers, Packed to the Rafters, My Place and All Saints.
On the big screen, Snook’s first major role in America was in Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs
alongside Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet. She delivered her most notable film
performance as the complex lead “Jane/John” alongside Ethan Hawke in the science-fiction
thriller Predestination, for which she received the AACTA Award and the Film Critics Circle of
Australia award for Best Actress.
Other film credits include supernatural horror film Winchester with Helen Mirren and Jason
Clarke; The Glass Castle alongside Brie Larson; Holding the Man opposite Guy Pearce; The
Dressmaker with Kate Winslet; Brother’s Nest; Odd Ball; Jessabelle; These Final Hours; Not
Suitable for Children; and Sleeping Beauty.
Snook established herself in the world of theatre through her performances in King Lear with the
State Theatre Company of South Australia; three productions for the Griffin Theatre Company
including Lovely/Ugly: Transformer, Crestfall and S27; alongside Ralph Fiennes in The Master
Builder at London’s Old Vic Theatre; and most recently, in Saint Joan for the Sydney Theatre
Company, for which she won Best Female Actor in a Play at Australia’s 2019 Helpmann
Awards.
Originally from Australia, she currently resides in New York City.
ILIZA SHLESINGER (Anita) is known for being one of today’s leading comedians with five
Netflix specials and has recently branched out into acting having recently starred opposite Mark
Wahlberg in the Netflix film Spenser Confidential. She will next be seen in the drama PIECES
OF A WOMAN starring Shia Labeouf and Vanessa Kirby, which will screen as part of the 77 th
Venice International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival in September 2020.
18Shlesinger was previously seen in 2018’s Instant Family, starring Wahlberg and Rose Byrne.
Her Netflix series The Iliza Shlesinger Sketch Show premiered April 1, and she recently guest
hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live.
In March 2020, to encourage people to stay at home and flatten the curve, Shlesinger and her
husband, chef and James Beard Award-nominated author Noah Galuten, launched Don’t Panic
Pantry, a fun, follow-along at-home cooking show that broadcasts live via Iliza’s social media
and includes easy-to-make recipes. The show recently surpassed 120 episodes and has been
featured on The TODAY Show, The Talk and more.
In November 2019, she premiered her fifth Netflix stand up special Unveiled, which delves into
her journey of getting married. Her past specials include War Paint, Freezing Hot and Confirmed
Kills. Iliza’s last Netflix special, 2018’s Elder Millennial, is the subject of Iliza Shlesinger: Over
& Over, her “fan-u-mentary” that is currently streaming and gives fans an inside look into what
goes into the making of one of her specials.
In 2017, she released her first book Girl Logic: The Genius and the Absurdity (Hachette Book
Group), a subversively funny collection of essays and observations on a confident woman’s
approach to friendship, singlehood and relationships. On her new podcast AIA: Ask Iliza
Anything she offers up her unique perspective to listeners, answering their questions on virtually
any topic. Past credits include Truth & Iliza, the limited-run talk show she hosted on Freeform,
and Forever 31, a digital series she created and starred in for ABC Digital. She is the only female
and youngest comedian to hold the title of NBC’s Last Comic Standing.
In 2019, she launched Christmas Mouth, a limited-edition fragrance she created for her fans and
named after her recently departed dog Blanche. It quickly sold out with a portion of the pre-sale
proceeds going to support Best Friends Animal Society.
BENNY SAFDIE (Chris) is an actor and director based in New York. He was last seen in A24’s
film Good Time opposite Rob Pattinson, which he also co-directed, and which premiered to rave
reviews at the Cannes Film Festival. He was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award as best
supporting actor for his captivating performance as the younger, mentally handicapped brother to
Pattinson’s character who serves as the catalyst for the film’s action.
JIMMIE FAILS (Max) made his feature debut as both an actor and writer in his critically
acclaimed A24 film The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which premiered at Sundance 2019
and garnered two awards there. Fails co-wrote with his best friend and longtime collaborator, Joe
Talbot, who directed with Plan B producing. It is a fable-like story based on Jimmie’s life and
the gentrification of San Francisco. Fails and Talbot previously collaborated on the short
19American Paradise, which premiered at 2017 Sundance and was a creative precursor to the
feature.
In addition to PIECES OF A WOMAN, Fails will next star opposite David Oyelowo in Solitary,
written and to be directed by Nate Parker.
ELLEN BURSTYN (Elizabeth) has had an illustrious 60 year acting career encompassing film,
stage and television. In 1975, she became the third woman in history to win both a Tony Award
and an Academy Award® in the same year for her work in Same Time, Next Year on Broadway
and in the film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, for which she also received a Golden Globe
nomination and a British Academy Award for Best Actress. She became a “triple crown winner”
when she received her first Emmy® for a guest appearance on Law & Order: SVU (2009). She
won her second Emmy® for her role in the miniseries Political Animals (2013). Additionally,
she has received six Emmy® nominations and five Academy Award® nominations, including
her nomination for Best Actress in The Exorcist (1973).
Her most recent films include The House of Tomorrow (2017), The Tale (2018),
Nostalgia (2018), Welcome to Pine Grove! (2019), Lucy in the Sky (2019) and PIECES OF A
WOMAN (2020). Her past work includes The Last Picture Show (1971, Golden Globe and
Academy Award® nominations), Resurrection (1981) and Requiem for a Dream (2000, Golden
Globe and Academy Award® nominations). In 2014, she was inducted into the Theater Hall of
Fame. She most recently starred in 33 Variations in Melbourne.
Burstyn is currently co-president of the Actors Studio alongside Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin.
She holds four honorary doctorates and lectures throughout the country. In 2006, she became a
national best-selling author with the publication of her memoir, Lessons in Becoming Myself.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
KORNEL MUNDRUCZO (Director) is a critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning
Hungarian film director and the founder of Proton Cinema. His first film Pleasant Days (2002)
was awarded the Silver Leopard in at the Locarno Film Festival. His following works all
premiered at Cannes Film Festival: Johanna (2005 Un Certain Regard); Delta (2008 Official
Competition) where it won the FIPRESCI prize; Tender Son (2010 Official Competition); White
God (2014 Un Certain Regard) where it won the Prize Un Certain Regard; and Jupiter’s Moon
(2017 Official Competition).
Mundruczó studied film and television at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Hungary.
PIECES OF A WOMAN is his first English-language film.
20KATA WEBER (Screenwriter) began her career working in theatre, eventually becoming a
screenwriter and playwright. Her theatre pieces have travelled all over the world with great
success. While maintaining an active presence in the European theatre and opera scene, she also
began collaborating with writer and director Kornél Mundruczó. Their work together has
included White God (2014), which won the Prize Un Certain Regard and had a Spotlight section
at the Sundance Film Festival, and Jupiter’s Moon (2017) was also In Competition as part of the
Official Selection of the 70th Cannes Film Festival. PIECES OF A WOMAN (2020) is Wéber’s
third original story and her first English-language piece brought to screen. She is a graduate of
the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest.
ASHLEY LEVINSON (Producer) is an American film producer and the Chief Strategy Officer
at BRON Studios. At BRON, Levinson is responsible for fostering filmmaker and industry
relationships and identifying key corporate opportunities across BRON’s various subsidiaries,
including BRON Studios, BRON Creative, BRON Digital, BRON Releasing and BRON
Ventures. Prior to BRON, Levinson served as the Chief Operating Officer at Annapurna
Pictures. She is also the co-founder of Little Lamb Productions, along with Sam Levinson and
Kevin Turen, which created the HBO series Euphoria and the feature PIECES OF A WOMAN,
directed by Kornél Mundruczó. She served as an executive producer on Jay Roach’s Bombshell
(2019), co-executive producer on Lena Waithe’s Queen & Slim (2019) and co-executive
producer on The Green Knight (2020), as well as producer for the upcoming film Malcolm &
Marie.
AARON RYDER (Producer) is one of the brightest and most prolific producers working today.
His work at FilmNation Entertainment includes such hits as Denis Villeneuve’s Academy
Award®-winning science fiction epic Arrival, Jeff Nichols’s Mud and The Founder, directed by
John Lee Hancock and starring Michael Keaton. He recently produced Lisa Joy’s feature
directorial debut Reminiscence, The Good House for Amblin Pictures, and Greyhound, starring
and written by Tom Hanks. Current films in different stages of production for Ryder include The
Map of Tiny Perfect Things for Amazon Studios, and Misanthrope, starring Shailene Woodley.
His past credits include Christopher Nolan’s Memento and The Prestige, The Mexican starring
Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, and Donnie Darko with Drew Barrymore and Jake Gyllenhaal.
KEVIN TUREN (Producer) most recently produced the A24 feature film Waves, which
premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and was featured on National Board of Review as one of
the ten best films of the year. He is an executive-producer of the Emmy Award®-nominated
HBO series Euphoria starring Zendaya. Turen produced both Malcolm & Marie, written and
directed by Sam Levinson and starring Zendaya and John David Washington, and the New Line
Cinema release Those Who Wish Me Dead, written and directed by Taylor Sheridan and starring
Angelina Jolie—both of which are currently in post-production. He’s the executive producer
21You can also read
